


Relics

by singswithtrees



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Nongraphic but creepy depiction of ritual cannibalism, Other, also touching on medieval reliquaries a bit?, kind of, melding of Vuvalini and Warboy culture, warboy cargo cult
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-21
Updated: 2018-05-21
Packaged: 2019-05-09 16:08:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14719298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/singswithtrees/pseuds/singswithtrees
Summary: After the fall of Immortan Joe, the Warboys don't lose the faith.  They know he'll return one of these days.  Until then, they wait.





	Relics

They traitored Him. All of them. Tossed Him away like He was nothing, like He was one of the wretched, not a god. But we who still knew that He was the one to catch the sun, we couldn’t let them do Him like that. It took five of the biggest shouldering past the mob what was ripping off bits, anything they could get, scraps of cloth, a bit of hair, but we got to Him, and none of them touched us once we was all around the Immortan. Not one of them dared. We barely dared ourselves, but our tallest took Him up and cradled the broken godflesh in his arms, and led us to the shrine.

Couldn’t just let Him go to rot and ruin. That’s not been our way, and for Him that’d be heresy. The water’s brought, and we washed Him top to bottom, cleaned the gore off, told Him that we haven’t forgotten, we know the code, and He’s to be with the Citadel forever, if we have our way. They want to get rid of it, not think about Him no more, and we’ll let them. But someone can’t forget, someone has to be the new history man, tell of His glory. Nobody Witnessed Him, but we all felt Him. We sent a couple scouts out to look for leftovers, out there straggling back to the barracks. The rest of us got the knives.

He’ll stay with us, part of us, till He returns, we’ll all have part of His full-life running loud and strong in our blood, He’ll drive out the sickness and come for us with a storm at his back and the sun in his hands. A couple is pretty sure this is the case. The rest know the least we can do is honor Him like this, take Him in and on and know that He’s still with us, just like the Witnessed that we can drag back to home and to the Gutters. The Gutters are the ones that know how to use the sharpest things, clean flesh from bone, swift and sure as any of us on our rigs. They know a body like we know an engine block, and they don’t waste nothing. This is different, different from their usual, and so they’re slower, more careful, praying as they gut and flay Him on the slab and sort the bits into their trays, washed and shined like they should be to give proper reverence. Shiny and chrome. The trays, the knives, all of it shine. We weep and we pray. We all partake, and we pass the bones from brother to brother, and bring them to the place where we know they’ll be safe with us.

 

There’s a place now by the altar, and none touches it but us. Oh, one has the bellows that gave Him air, another the medals, but the mask and the bones rest in a box made special for Him, and there He’ll rest till Valhalla comes to us or he returns astride the Gigahorse, cylinders roaring with nitro and blood, shiny and chrome. We tell Him all that goes on, we keep up the shrine and our cars and bikes, keep the code in our hearts, even if we’re changing along with all the rest. We still know that He’ll come again if we’re patient, and grant us all full lives. Some have already said they’ve dreamed of Him, and He’s taken away their sickness in reward for their faith.

So we wait, we love, and we change, but we know who owns us in our deepest bits. Making war is different now, and sometimes we makes buildings or pups instead, but we each come to our war different, and we each get Witnessed different. We ain’t sure if the ones what’re full-lifes now even need Witnessing, but it’d be wrong not to, so we wait, and we build, and we tell His story and grow strong. And the strangers grow strong with us, the women from the desert, and we ain’t strictly Warboys any more, but they ain’t strictly themselves anymore, neither. Some of us learn to grow the green things that have tantalized us since we were small and looking up at the heavens, and we teach them mechanicry like they teach us physicking: they’re the same.

We wonder if they suspect we kept Him, we hold Him close, keep Him safe and home. We’re mixed now, Him and us, and we can’t leave Him lonely and abandoned like charnel. He needs us. We need Him. We were chosen by Him, and for Him, we blast ourselves to a thousand ribbons of blood and flesh. We write it in our flesh with the flesh He’s given us. We keep the war-drums in readiness for when He’ll rise and lead us to glory and to death. War will come again, we know it in our bones, as He knows it from His seat at the head of the fallen.

**Author's Note:**

> Ever since the film came out, I've wanted to write about Warboy culture morphing into something new, or several separate subcultures. Their associations with death, bones, and people-as-objects and objects-as-people seemed a perfect fit to be woven into something akin to a cargo cult, with bits of medieval saint relics and a dash of dying-and-rising-god-king thrown in.


End file.
